[S2E3] How to: positioning
with Josh Garofalo, Sway Copy
What does “good” (as in, helping you get more leads) positioning look like? Listen to the episode or read through the transcript to find out.
Sway Copy website: https://swaycopy.com/
Josh Garofalo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshgarofalo
Sway Copy website: https://swaycopy.com/
Josh Garofalo
My name is Josh Garofalo. I'm the founder of swaycopy.com. I've been on my own since 2015, so about 10 years now. I've worked with a number of large companies like HubSpot and Shutterstock and Wave and a whole bunch of companies that you haven't heard of yet.
I think I'm at like 100 plus companies now, last time I counted. I mainly focus on positioning, messaging and copywriting. I often build myself as that product marketer that can do the strategy but then execute so you don't actually have that gap between that shiny deck and things actually going live on the page and making their way into sales calls.
And yeah, I'm excited to talk about this. Since I've I've slowed down since having a little toddler of my own, so I'm really excited to kind of get back into this with you.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
Thank you for joining me. Something we talked about really briefly before we started the recording, is most startups don't need positioning to be the standalone thing that lives in the deck. Most of them need positioning, messaging and copy all together. So what does an MVP look like? How do you approach this?
Josh Garofalo
Yeah, I guess the best way to talk about it would be, I very much blur the lines between the three disciplines, and I know that's not going to sit well with some people. Some people really like to see positioning is this person's job, messaging is this person's job, and then we get it to the copywriter.
But that's just a luxury that a lot of companies don't have.
They need to move faster than that. They can't afford, necessarily, to hire three separate specialists and then have that wait time between them, and then, as I'm sure you've seen many times, the message kind of gets lost in translation, what the person was envisioning as the when the positioning expert just doesn't make its way all the way down to the copywriting.
So I think for startups hiring somebody like you, somebody like me, someone who can actually go from start to finish, is a really good idea in terms of what an MVP would look like.
I'm really just trying to figure out something that I call a category story, and it's just a simple way to explain to people that if you are a challenger brand, you are not the first choice that they're evaluating
They're either using the incumbent, [or] evaluating the incumbent, and they're looking for a reason not to continue with them or to choose them. And so that is the context that I start with, and then from there, it's really just figuring out what is that story of “These are your choices. This is who they're good for. For somebody like you. It's not the ideal choice.Instead, you should choose somebody like us.”
And I try to weave that message into places where we're going to get a lot of traffic and a lot of feedback. So homepage would be one and the other, if you've read April Dunford's book Sales Pitch, it's getting into that sales pitch and actually seeing how people are reacting to that story in real time.
And it's often a huge upgrade to the sales pitch. I don't know if you do work with sales pitches at all, but most of the time, when I move into a SaaS company, the sales pitch is very typical. Like, hey, here's our product. These are all the features, and let me just walk you through it from start to finish.
Whereas, after I'm done with the sales pitch, usually we're starting with that category story, like “These are your choices. This is where we think they're falling short and where we think we excel. Let me show you two or three things that really make us different. This is why people are choosing our little company over this massive $500 million company.”
It's really,it's not building a 100 page, 100 slide deck that is going to collect dust. It's what can we get out there, like this month, next month, that can help us get closer to telling that story that is compelling to our ideal customer.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
That makes sense, and yet, there are so many folks that are trying to build a category of their own to avoid competing with anybody
Josh Garofalo
That's a juicy topic. For me, I think most companies, especially smaller ones, should steer clear away from trying to create a category.
I think if you are going to create a category as a small company, it's because it just happens. Because there is no choice. You are literally doing something new, like you're solving a new problem in a new way, and you have no choice.
But otherwise, I think the wise move is to compete in an established category and sort of carve out a special slice.
And I think some of the examples that we're going to talk about today are an example of that. They're going up against massive companies, often companies that give you a lot for free, and yet they are still doing really well. At least one of them is doing really well, and we can talk about why the other one might not be.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
Let’s jump right in.
Josh Garofalo
Okay.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
The first example we're going to discuss is Fathom Analytics, a web analytics solution that is not afraid to call out its primary competitor.
Josh Garofalo
Yeah. They go right for the jugular. … And I think this is honestly where most challenger brands are.
If they're not first to market, they see there's a bunch of established competitors. There's some that might be even like publicly traded, and yet they think they compete. Why is that? Let's just talk about that so that the people who are out there looking at the incumbents and are seeing this as a problem can identify your solution as the ideal one for them.
So yeah, they go right for the jugular, as you say, and really the entire company and the entire page is a reaction to what people hate about Google Analytics, and I don't know if it's still the case, but before, as a secondary thing, they were kind of going after some of the other paid solutions as being more complex, and I think they still do go after them a little bit.
But yeah, at the heart of it, it's “Google Analytics is painful.”
Yes, it's free. You're here because despite it being free, you feel like it's costing you your sanity, more or less. So let's, like, dive in and tell you, like, how this is completely different than Google Analytics.
And yeah, as you go through the page, literally every feature, every headline, is contrary to what Google Analytics could say about themselves.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
So what I would like to call out is that very often when we think about strong positioning in B2B SaaS, what comes to mind is the point of view positioning so literally, everything that 37signals does.
But that's not the only way to stand out, and because not all industries are completely broken, it is not going to be always applicable to your industry or to your competitive landscape. So Fathom Analytics is a great example of why it's worth considering other options as well.
Josh Garofalo
I think what Fathom Analytics has in their favor here is they have sort of a singular target, so they can literally call out by name Google Analytics.
And the other advantage they have is who they are going after will never come back after them, so they're able to punch and they're not going to get punched back Google Analytics.
Google Analytics will never mention Fathom Analytics, and if they ever do, it's because it's too late and Fathom Analytics grew into some massive company that's now rivaling Google, which probably won't happen. But they're they've got a very big business
Whereas I find 37signals, they kind of take on, as you said, they have a point of view. So they see something happening in the industry, in a category with multiple fairly powerful players, and they call out sort of something they think is wrong about it and how they're going to right it.
They try to position themselves as a hero or the savior, and people have different views of 37signals, but you can't argue with the fact that they've been successful. They have a pretty small company that's hugely profitable, and they consistently find ways to be competitive in very mature categories.
So for most, if the reason you started your company is because there's a single competitor in the space that's massive, and you just think they aren't giving enough, there's a segment of people that aren't getting what they need from it, go ahead and consider calling them out by name if you've got the guts to do that, like Fathom Analytics.
Or there's ways to imply who you're speaking about as well. And those who know will know who you're talking about. And you don't have to risk any legal retribution, which is unlikely in this case, but there's some people that just don't have that risk tolerance.
And if what you're seeing is an issue in the market, in the category, in the way business is done, then consider calling that out and position yourself as a hero, as the person who's going to do things differently.
And you mentioned 37Signals, and a really good example of that is their newest endeavor, which is once.com, which is basically saying, “You know you're paying for things like Slack on a subscription – tools that are fairly basic or people use [them] in a very basic way most of the time. You should just have to pay for this one time, once.” And that's a perfect example of 37Signals going after a way of doing business.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
As the next example we're going to discuss is Outline, a company that is actually shutting down as of January 2025. Which just goes to show, sometimes great positioning is not enough.
But if you're curious about what makes it a perfect example of strong positioning translated into great homepage copy, keep listening.
Josh Garofalo
Yeah. So Outline is an interesting one, because I've had it earmarked as a page that when I have more time I was going to talk about it like on Twitter and LinkedIn as I think this is literally a near perfect landing page.
And yet, when I went to it today to review it for this call, I clicked on “Use Outline now,” and it said, “We regret to inform you that as of January 2025, Outline is shutting down.
I should also say that this is founded by Oli Gardner, the founder of Unbounce, a very successful company.
So this is someone who knows what he's doing. He has a lot of success under his belt, he has resources. He put together a perfect page, excellent positioning.
When I watched the video where he does exactly what I said, which is like, contrast it with all the alternatives and show [that for] somebody like you, if you're serious about a presentation, you should not be using AI, you should not be using a Google Doc, you should not be using blank slides. This is built for that serious person who wants to put together a top presentation at a conference, and yet they're going out of business.
Maybe he just decided not to go ahead with this.
But my suspicion is that it's, I imagine, he probably put together a very good solution to this problem, but that solution just wasn't painful enough for people to pay for on a recurring basis.
I don't know if you've been to conferences and you've seen the same speaker, they kind of do the same talk, like over and over again.
So it probably doesn't lend itself to a recurring business model. And it's just an example of how you can do all of this,but if you don't have product market fit, it's not going to save you.
You've probably been contacted by people who are like, “Our business is burning to the ground. We need really good copy to help sell it.” And if it's just not a good product, or is not a good product market fit, there's just nothing you can do. The perfect page is just not good enough.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
Yes. Nevertheless, we can still learn from things that didn't work out, even if we probably will never find out why they didn't work. Do you want yourself to the page and talk about what makes it the perfect page?
Josh Garofalo
I do still think that the page is excellent, and I probably will still talk about it and continue to reference it, because it just does exactly what I would have done if I were hired and given complete freedom.
So headline, pretty basic. “Great presentations start with an outline,” but then he kind of digs into the problem of why some presentations are bad, and it's because they lack focus, confuse the audience, waste everyone's time, and then the crux of it is, if you get your story straight first, the rest will just flow.
And if you've ever put together a presentation, flow is usually not a word you would use to describe how it feels to build a presentation. It's usually a lot of second guessing, going back and deleting things.
And I think their thesis is that it's because of how you're building a presentation that that ends up being the case. And then in the next section, they call out the five things that cause presentations to fail and that they fix.
And I think the best part of this page is their video, where they do exactly what I would call a category story.
They go through all of the basic ways that people create presentations today, show their shortcomings and how Outline is a reaction to those. And they're against some very tough competition, old established tools that everyone has for free, and he has to make a compelling case for that prospect that really cares about making the perfect presentation and showing them how this is the way to do it. … He's great on camera. Everyone already knows he's a good presenter, which is good because this is for presenting, so you know that he knows what he's doing. He just completely dismantles all the competitors.
And for somebody who's serious, it's very compelling. I guess there's probably just not enough people who are serious enough about this to pay for it on a recurring basis to make it a feasible business or an interesting business for someone who's already had so much success.
And then as you go through the rest of the page, I don't know if there's too much we need to talk about, he does show how you solve each of the problems, and you go through that process of actually creating a presentation.
But I guess the other part that would be very telling is at the very end, similar to Fathom, it's “Ditch the Google Doc bullet points and build a real outline.” So again, he's calling out Google, big old Google, and that's the strategy for a lot of people. Google makes a lot of software, a lot of bloated free software.
And whenever you have bloat, you have the opportunity, not always, in this case, maybe there isn't the opportunity, but there's often the opportunity to get specific on the features, not deliver everything that anyone could ever want, and build something specifically for somebody and make it very powerful and usable for them, and charge money for something that they could have gotten for free if they're willing to go through the hassle of dealing with the bloated product. That's often a business model that I see successful startups using.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
So for Outline, the thing that I find really interesting is that it's a combination of solution categories, like AI, then specific products, like Google Slides or Google Doc outlines and then other things that you might have considered doing that are product agnostic, but still don't deliver a result that you want.
Josh Garofalo
I'm actually glad you called that out because that is a really good point.
Often when you're going through, you know, a light positioning exercise, what you find, and it's kind of like one of the examples that we were going to talk about, but we kind of ditched last second – gogander.io.
There are other competitors who do something similar to them, but what we found when you actually talk to people is they are not thinking about your other very similar, very small competitors.
They're thinking about established ways of doing business.
So, yeah, it's not always. You're not always competing against the person who does what you do.
You're competing against alternative ways to get to that end goal. That's often the case, actually, I would say, and that's a huge mistake that startups make, is they start kind of splitting hairs with another company that's doing something very similar to them.
And you cannot create a compelling argument against those people, but you can create a compelling argument against the things that 80% of the market is using. So that's what you should do.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
Well, one of the reasons that I didn't want to get into Gander is that the scroll to see the next section of the page stuff is just too hard…. [to deal with]
Gander website | Gander homepage scrolldown
Josh Garofalo
That's why I said, that's why I said we worked together, and I didn't love the way it was all executed. It's very, you know, high design, and in my opinion, not as usable as it could have been, and they cut out some things that I think made the page much more powerful.
But yeah, it was still a good example, especially in the mock up, of how I think a category story and how to think about positioning, messaging, copywriting for a startup should go. But yeah.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
Can I ask, what's the one thing that you miss the most?
Josh Garofalo
Sure, yeah, so if I go to their page, the scrolling does kind of drive me nuts.
I can't imagine that it's helping them. They really, they really dialed back on where we scroll down, it says, “Without Gander,” I really dug deep into the pain points and it's something that we can all relate to, because we all do it.
So what we found is people would go to a website, in this case, it's usually like a retailer brand’s website, and they see something they like. But then it's like, I don't want to spend 100 bucks without really knowing this is good. So then they go to Reddit, and they start reading some reviews, and, you know, they continue to look around online. They go to YouTube, watch reviews, they encounter competitor products, and they go down a rabbit hole, and so many of them will not make it back to that original website that kicked it off, because they've been they've either gotten overwhelmed with choice, so they don't even make one, or they found something that might be a better fit for them, at least they think so.
So that is a problem that they're solving, and I really kind of spelled that out in some detail. It wasn't like an overwhelming amount of detail, but it was enough to help people picture “Oh yeah, I definitely do that.”
And then it shows how what Gander does: it brings the best of what's out there onto the website, so that more people are actually staying on the website and making that decision, without hoping that they come back one day
So that got cut down dramatically.
And I imagine it's so that it can fit into this scrolling design, which, I mean, that's another thorn in our side as copywriters, is design dictating what gets said.
It's usually not the right way to do things. It should be the other way around.
So yeah, that one hurt, the design hurt, the scrolling sort of headline kind of hurt as well. There's a lot of things that hurt, in terms of the design of the website, but for the most part, I think we did a good job, but you can't always help what ends up live, right?
And actually, this is another example of what you were talking about, how you're not always going against the competitors.
So when we started talking, they would talk about their competitors, and what actually happened when we learned from the customers is, these are marketing teams who are being urged to increase conversions this next quarter, and you're not competing with other products. You're competing with other levers they can pull. And that, that was a big insight that we had and that's sort of what the headline reflects. It's showing like it's not redoing your website, it's video and bringing that onto the website, that is your solution.
But, yeah, I guess we meant to skip Gander, and we just went through it. But hopefully it's helpful, and hopefully it's a word of caution to other people out there to not create these crazy scrolling design websites, because I just don't think that's the right way to do things.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
If you are a founder or a marketing team of one at a startup, you're probably thinking, “Hmm, I bet AI is ready to take this on and reduce the complexity of figuring out our company's positioning.”
But the bigger question is, how do you know that the thing that AI recommends is the thing you should be executing on?
At the moment, it seems like some of the possible angles that are worth exploring because they are less obvious and therefore potentially more effective, may end up being overlooked by AI tools, at least for now. Fortunately, Josh has suggestions on what to look for.
Josh Garofalo
No, and I mean, I'm not anti AI, and I do use it in some ways, for sure, but I just think that there is still some art to this, and that AI is not quite capturing the art.
And what I mean by art is when you've been thinking about this for a long time, and you've done it for a bunch of companies, and you've heard countless sales calls and and whatnot, it's just you're able to pull out things that I don't think AI would quite zoom in on.
And a common example that would be, you know, AI would do a really good job of pulling out. If I had a whole bunch of interviews, AI would do a pretty good job of saying, like, these are the things that people are talking about most. But maybe there's something that was taught that was only spoken about once or twice, and you're like, that is interesting, like, based on what I know about what makes companies work and not work, and this market and these customers, I think these two people are saying something that the others just probably didn't think to say at this time.
But if we dug into a little bit more, we'd find that actually, like this is a thread we should pull on a little bit more. And I just think that's something that comes from doing this for a long time and seeing things work and not work.
So, yeah, I don't think AI is there yet. I think AI can do a decent job if you're somebody who has no idea what you're doing and you can't hire someone who knows what they're doing. They might help guide you, you know. But if you have a choice between hiring an expert and AI, I just don't think it's quite there yet.
It is a tool. It's a tool for people who are very good, and it's a false safety blanket for people who are not very good. And you probably won't even recognize that what you've done is not very good, because it will sound pretty good, pretty convincing, right?
Step one, if you can, hire somebody. If you can't, you really just have to get into the mess of it. You have to record those sales calls and figure out:
Why are people choosing us?
Why are people turning us down?
Who else were they considering?
And your sales team has to be asking these questions. Like, who else are they considering? What do they like about those things? They haven't chosen them yet? Like, why not?
Like, if you're in the email space and you're not MailChimp, you're not ActiveCampaign, but they're talking to you, why would they talk to you when there is an established product out there that so many people trust? Something is missing and they must suspect that you offer that thing, otherwise you would not be wasting their time.
Because this is not shopping for shoes, shopping for software is not fun for most people. So if they're doing it, it's because something is missing and they think you've got it.
And yeah, it's detective work. It's listening to sales calls. It's talking to customers. It's taking a look at some of those competitors that are coming up and trying to find gaps in their messaging, things that they're not claiming. Another fun thing to do is to take a look at established competitors, one to three star reviews, looking for themes, things that keep coming up over and over again. And you might find some that you have an answer for.
And there might be an opportunity to position around some of that, because, again, if you're a challenger brand in a competitive category, you're a reaction to the status quo.
So react, react to the things that people are complaining about. That's what your product and your positioning and messaging should be built around.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
For early stage startups, another thing that I feel is really important to talk about is the difference between positioning for investors versus positioning for your market. So here's what to consider as you are getting ready to use your website to attract your prospects.
Josh Garofalo
Definitely. And yeah, it's usually two separate pitches. And I think April Dunford talks about this a little bit too, how investors, they want to see the future pitch. Save that for your deck. Save that maybe for if you want to put it on your own website, like an about section or a mission section, something that most people are probably not going to read, but you can at least point people to.
But the actual website, if you're interested in customers, you need to meet them where they are today with their pain, help them evaluate the solutions and tell a compelling story about why they should choose you.
And most companies are falling short there. So they're either doing what you said there, they're speaking to investors on their website and wondering why they're not getting customers, or they're just saying enough about themselves, a “Why us” versus a “Why us, not them,” story. They tell a “Why us” story, that allows them maybe, if you're lucky, to add yet another option to their list of options, which is annoying, because, like we said earlier, this is annoying to buy software, and people don't want to be shopping for software.
And so you need to go one step further and say “Of the options that are out there, this is where we think they're falling short. This is our thesis, and this is how we're a reaction to that. So if you're someone who's not happy with these options for these reasons, I think you're going to find what you want here.”
Fathom Analytics, where we started, is exactly that. For some people, free, invasive – excellent. I'll take the invasiveness. I'll take all the feature bloat, because it's free.
For others who are like, “I don't want to be wasting my time at Google Analytics, and I want my customers to feel safe, and don't want those cookie banners on my site,” they're willing to pay for Fathom Analytics.
So call it out, and there will be a small segment of Google Analytics customers who resonate. And that's why… I know [that] unlike Outline, I know Fathom Analytics is actually doing really, really well.
Ekaterina (Sam) Howard
Thank you for listening. If you haven't done so already, make sure you check out the transcript page to see the copy examples that we have discussed in this episode.
Coming up next: a topic that is near and dear to my heart – how to make sure that the copy you send out into the world will actually convert. I'll be chatting with Alex Atkins from Sturdy AI about the evolution of the website and the decisions that led him to the current website version.